You will find 4 layouts from some of my bestie scrappy friends while you are there, too! Liz Qualman, Susan Dupre and Julie Howard all have layouts in the magazine again. What is really cool... Liz's layout is on the cover this quarter! Congrats Liz!

Susan Dupre put this fun kit together for us to work with and I have to say thanks Nikki for providing us with such great things to work with for this series! You will want to pop over to Nikki Silvils' site to check out more of her fabulous products.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

I am always excited to see the My Mind's Eye Blog challenge go up. This one is the 'Anything Goes' challenge and again has a wonderful sketch by Anam Stubbington. I really loved this sketch! It was perfect as it was, so I did not change it much at all. I used a combination of Quite Contrary and added a bit of Abbey Road, too. I love the way that MME products seem to compliment each other from release to release.

The green paper and the brads are from the Abbey Road collection. The other papers and stickers are from Quite Contrary.

Here is the sketch:

Here is my layout. This is my daughter and her close friend. They went to Mexico for vacation a couple of years ago and brought back such cute pictures.

I did a lot of stitching on this one. It takes a while, but I always end up liking it to add just a bit of extra detail. I even did a bit of stitching on one of the stickers.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

I was really happy to guest design for Liz Qualman's blog again this month. If you haven't seen them before, be sure to go look at her wonderful sketches! My Little Sketch Blook Liz does fabulous sketches that are so versatile and fun.

This week's sketch was a great one. I really loved that it pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I love the bright and fun! I don't really use many circles, but Liz loves them. I really like how my layout turned out. My pictures weren't exactly right for the sketch, but when I turned the sketch on it's side, I got exactly what I was looking for with these pictures.

I used mostly Jillibean Soup products on this one. Love them! I am enjoying the comeback of kraft paper that I'm seeing lately and decided to give the punched look another go on this one. I really like these Jillibean letters and I used my glaze pen to give them a more custom look. I did some stitching, too.

Here is my layout.

This is my sweet great niece Becca. I lifted these pictures off of my niece's facebook page. :)

A little message to Becca:Becca if you read this, you should know how proud I am of you! I hear and read quite often what a wonderful help you are to your mom. I know that you helped so much with the little ones while she was carrying the twins and I know that you are going to be such a great help with the twins now!! You are growning up to be such a wonderful young lady! I just wish that I got to see you more. Love you!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Hi everyone! It's time for another Really Reasonable Ribbon blog hop! I received the TERRIFIC Monthly Ribbon Club Assortment this month! It is a wonderful combination of pinks and browns. You get LOTS of ribbon for such a terrific price if you join the Monthly Ribbon Club.

Here is a layout I did using the ribbon from the May Club Assortment. You can order this here: Really Reasonable Ribbon Club All of the ribbons here are included in the Club Assortment!! Terrific stuff!

If you made it here from Cassie's Blog, you are on the right track and need to make your next stop at Kym Weber

If you started here to get into the order of things, go back to Really Reasonable Ribbon to start at the beginning! Be sure to follow the instructions to win the prize!! While you are there, be sure to check out the fabulous ideas from the design team.

Here is a list of all the stops, just in case you need it for reference.

Monday, May 10, 2010

It's hard to believe that it's already Monday again! I had a busy week getting ready for a party at my house. My parents had a party at my house this weekend. We had 30 people and it was lots of fun! Good people, good food and good times!

Check out this picture that I got during the party. My husband had taken the dogs out front and they walked right by this sweet baby! He called me from the front yard to get a picture. You can tell how tiny he is by how big the grass looks by his little head. I LOVE spring!

Now, onto Monday Must Haves...

This is a simple one. Do you have one of these?

This is such a simple little tool and such a useful one, too! I use this all the time. I love that it is inexpensive and that the refills are inexpensive, too. I got my X when I first started scrapping and I have been a fan ever since. In case you aren't familiar with it, it is a sticker maker. It makes small stickers and you can get either re-positionable or permanant refills. I prefer the permanant. I am able to position my embellishments and move them quickly if needed. After it goes down for a bit, it is there! No falling off the page later.

This is such a handy thing to use with die-cut letters and other small die-cut shapes. It is also my favorite way to adhere ribbons and trims to my pages. Any small thing that you want to adhere works in this little gem.

Be sure to use a coupon or watch for sales on the re-fills. I always get them that way and they are less than $3 with a coupon or on sale at Hobby Lobby. Even Walmart carries them.

Hint for ribbon: If you are using more than one ribbon on a page, set them side by side and pull them through at the same time. Lots less waste that way!

Hint for letters: Do several letters back to back before you tear off your strip. It saves adhesive this way, too.

AND... On to the Blog Hop!

Really Reasonable Ribbon is having a Blog Hop on Thursday! They are giving away another ribbon kit, too! You won't want to miss it!

Monday, May 3, 2010

If you are like me, I always wonder what other scrapbookers used on their pages. How did they do that? Where did they get it? It got me to thinking... Yes dangerous, I know!

I have some supplies that I seldom scrap without and I'm sure that all of you do, too. Monday Must Haves will be all about those things that we can't scrap without. It's also about new things that I 'MUST have'! I also plan to pass along some 'Must Haves' from other scrapbooker's that I have met along the way. I am going to post some of my "must haves" and I invite you to tell me about yours. I am always ready to try something new.

To kick off my new Monday posts, I want to start with transparencies. I am always reaching for my box of transparencies. I use them all the time. I love the printed ones from the manufacturers. Hambly and Fancy pants have some to die for! Teresa Collins and GCD also have transparencies that I love. My Mind's Eye does the sweetest small transparencies. The options are limitless.

The ones that I use the most though are the plain old transparencies that you can pick up at your local office supply stores. I use these from 3M.

Some of the ways that I use them are rather obvious, but not the way that I most use them. I do like to print on them to use on my pages. Making your own prints gives you endless color choices. I recently used them on a page to enhance my journaling and to add a 'custom' look.

One less obvious way to use them is under your stickers. I like to do this to give my stickers extra dimension. You can add pop dots under your stickers if they are on a tranparency or you can use them underneath a sticker that you might like to bend as I did on these butterflies.

I also like to use them when I am doing fussy cutting. If you have paper than when fussy cut is going to be really thin and fragile, simply glue some transparency to the back before starting your cutting. Transparency film will keep it strong so that it doesn't tear. Or if you have already cut it and you are worried about tearing just glue it to a pieces of transparency and loosley cut around it. I did that here on the fussy cutting along the top left.

More ideas... If you occasionally open your albums and find that something that you used pop dots on is no longer the right shape, back your embellishment or paper with transparency film. It is tough and won't bend in your albums.

Why don't you try punching your transparency to make custom flowers.

So, do you love transparencies? I would love to hear what you do with them.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Hi everyone! What a busy weekend! You would have thought that since it was National Scrapbooking Day that I would have been scrapping. Nope! That wasn't the case. My son was home for the weekend working on a project and we were also having fun at Join Hands Day.

It is a national day where fraternal organizations join hands with other's in their communities to give a hand. We had a great morning at the local children's home planting flowers and doing other yard work for one of the cottages. It was a great time and it's always fun to get together with our friends. We also got to meet some really great people who are making a difference in children's lives. Of course, the best part was getting to meet the kids who live there. Here is a picture of our volunteers along with the house parents and the boys who live in the cottage. I am not in the picture... I'm taking it!

Thanks to everyone who came! Also thanks to our members who were in other places around our communtity joining hands!

And... I promised a winner tonight for my Ribbon RAK!

I used a random generator to draw a number between 1 and 45 to choose a winner. As you can see, the winning number is 9!

Kmassman you are the winner! Please use the contact me image to send me an e-mail with your name and address. I'll get your prize out to you!

Thanks everyone for participating in my first blog hop! I truly appreciate everyone who dropped by and left me comments.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Today is the day! It's not only National Scrapbook Day, it's time for the first Blog Hop for Really Reasonable Ribbon!! I am really excited about the Design Team Announcement today! As you all know by now, I'm a ribbon NUT and am so happy to let ya'll know that I have been asked to be on the https://www.reasonableribbon.com/DT! Yippeee!! What a perfect fit for me! You all MUST go check out their prices!! The site is loaded with beautiful ribbons and seriously, their name is perfect!! It really is so reasonably priced! I would go so far as to say that it's actually really fabulously priced!!

Ok... Back to the blog hop information! If you are starting out with my blog post your next stop should be back the Really Reasonable Ribbon Blog to get a true start on the hop and to check out the PRIZE!! Yes, after all what is a blog hop without prizes? You will also want to check out all the ideas that the new design team is sharing along the way.

NOW... Prizes... Well, it is National Scrapbook Day and I did just make a ribbon design team... and because I feel like giving something away...I'm having a RAK today!! All you have to do is leave me a comment and I'll enter you into a drawing for a Ribbon Rak! If you want to follow my blog, that will make me even more happy! :) I'll use a random generator and announce the winner on Sunday evening! Easy!

Finally, I wanted to share a little card that I made up.

I was reading some of the comments from people at the Really Reasonable Ribbon Blog and noticed that there were a lot of requests for how-tos on ribbon flowers. There were also requests for things that were flatter for mailing and layouts. This is a super simple idea for a flower.

To make the flower, you will need 5/8 inch satin ribbon, tape, and a hole punch. (I used my Making Memories Eyelet tool to make my holes.)

First, use a circle of some kind to find you placement for your flower. Mark five places equally around the circle. Mark a place in the middle for your flower center.

Next, use your hole punch or eyelet punch to make a hole in each of the marked places. Your center hole should be bigger than the outside holes. It will look like this.

Now, cut a long piece of ribbon and thread it through the holes. Start from the back with one of the outside holes and go through the center to make each petal. Repeat the process with all 5 petals.

Secure the ribbon ends on the back with tape.

Your finished flower should look like this. For the card, I put a brad in the middle. You could use a button or anything else you would like for the center.

You can use all different sizes of ribbon for this. If you are using a thin ribbon, you will want to put your holes closer together. If you use a thicker ribbon, I would suggest a sheer or other really flexible ribbon. There are loads of choices at Really Reasonable Ribbon, so be sure to go check it out!